by Paul Kenyon
Huang lifted the little corpses, one over each shoulder, and carried them to the nearest cabin. He tossed them through the door like a couple of fireplace logs.
Chu went swiftly through the cabins, one by one, checking. There was an elderly couple that had been sitting down to a meal of potatoes and fish. The bullets had tumbled the woman backward; she lay on her back with her legs up, draped over the seat of the chair. Her husband had fallen over the table, his head resting in his plate. In the next cabin was a family of four. They were sprawled around the stove they had been staying near to keep warm. In one of the cabins, a man had gone for a shotgun. He must have been very quick. It lay close to his hand, where he'd dropped it when the steel-jacketed slugs had torn him apart.
In the next-to-last cabin, Chu heard a groan. A young blonde woman was stirring feebly on the floor, trying to lift her head. She was spattered with blood. One arm had almost been torn off by machine gun fire.
Chu drew his revolver and shot her once through the head. He turned to Huang, bulking large at his shoulder. "Find out who the squad leader responsible is," Chu said. "Reprimand him."
He took a last look around and went outside. The village looked peaceful in the clear Arctic air. All around him, his men were mounting the saddles of their snowmobiles again.
Chu smiled. The guns his men used were of an American make. The squad leaders, as directed, had dropped a few bits of false evidence here and there. When the Russians got around to checking things out later, there would be hell to pay.
For the Americans.
He gave the signal and the cavalcade of snowmobiles moved on, their silenced engines almost inaudible. Ahead was Cape Kanin. And a container of germs that would give China an invincible power against the world.
Chapter 10
The bear festival was getting out of hand.
The Baroness stood by the entrance to her tent, watching. A strange frenzy had overtaken the Lapps. They were no longer the gentle, courteous people she'd been traveling with.
A man staggered by, stripped to the waist in the numbing cold, his body smeared with the blood of the bear Vana had killed. A naked woman stepped into his path. The man dropped to all fours, shaking his head from side to side in imitation of a bear.
"How long does this go on?" the Baroness said.
"Three days," Eric said. "The hunters can't sleep with their wives all that time. Then they have a purifying ceremony. The women throw hot ashes at them."
Skytop was watching the woman. "I thought Lapp women were modest."
"That's not sex," Eric said. "She's shaming the bear, so that it'll turn aside from the attack."
Sure enough, the blood-smeared man pawed the ground, turned and scrambled away on all fours.
The Baroness shook her head. "Three days. I don't like it. We can't afford the time."
She cast a worried glance toward the huge bonfire some distance away. The Lapps were gathered around it, drinking, eating the boiled bear meat, singing the ritual songs thanking the grandfather of the hill for not breaking their spears.
A party of hunters had discovered the den that morning, only a mile from the line of march. The sacred ritual was organized quickly. The old man who served as sorcerer made the ancient incantations at the den's entrance. Two poles were set up to slow the great beast's charge. They shouted and rattled pots and pans to wake the hibernating animal up.
Vana stood there, armed with a wooden spear that looked flimsy and ridiculous against the gigantic, ill-tempered creature that charged toward him. The bear reared on its hind legs, nine feet tall and weighing close to a half-ton. Claws like steel hooks reached for him. Vana stood his ground. He slipped his spear expertly into the bear's chest and braced the end of the spear against the ground. The great claws stretched toward him, just a foot out of reach. The infuriated bear pushed itself into the spear in its frenzy to get to him. Vana couldn't let go. He shifted his grip further and further down the shaft, trying to keep out of reach. By the time the bear died, he had bare inches left.
It was tremendously exciting. Penelope had felt her juices flow, her skin flush hot. Vana's three-day ritual celibacy was going to be a problem. She'd just have to make it irresistible for him to break his vow. The sorcerer could purify him later.
Wharton broke into her thoughts. "We're halfway across the Kola Peninsula. And border security is two hundred miles behind us. Maybe we should take off on our own."
"Yeah," Skytop said. "That three days is bad news."
"We'll see," the Baroness said angrily. She stalked away.
She bumped into Sumo, hurrying toward her tent. She tried to brush past him, but he grabbed her arm.
"I've got a toothache," he said.
He looked miserable. The side of his face was swollen.
"Where?" she said, instantly alert.
"Vana's tent."
"When?"
"For the last hour, while everybody's been busy with the bear festival. Pretty sophisticated equipment for a Lapp. Directional. He's been trying to raise someone almost due west. His signals just stopped."
"His contacts. The two I killed, Gorev and Karp."
Sumo nodded. "That's what I figured."
She patted him on the cheek. He winced. "Look after your jaw, Tommy. I'll take care of it. And will you adjust that damned gadget when we get back? We can't have you taking novocain every time you detect a transmission."
She headed toward Vana's tent. Good old Tommy! Vana had smashed the long-range receiver in the sledge. But he hadn't been able to smash Sumo's bridgework.
She closed the familiar steel shutters over her brain, the ones that kept her from thinking too far ahead. She wasn't going to enjoy killing Vana.
The flap of Vana's tent was parting. Penelope ducked behind a snowbank. After a moment she raised her head cautiously. There he was, striding away from her, tall for a Lapp with his Scandinavian blood. He looked splendid and barbaric in his embroidered tribal colors, the fresh wolfskin over his shoulders.
He bent to put on the skis he was carrying. He was going to travel a distance. Penelope fumed. No time to go back and get hers. Next to her was a tent with one of the hearth logs outside — a sign that the owners were away. Penelope did the unforgivable. She stepped over the log and entered. She committed the second great crime in the Lapp lexicon — taking something from a tent. It was a pair of handmade skis, lovingly polished. She took the single long ski pole beside them and hurried out. No one saw her. Out of sight of the encampment, she put the skis on, fitting the turned-up toe of her Lapp boots into the simple loop of leather in front.
She followed his tracks at a careful distance. Vana was a hunter. He'd know when he was being trailed.
The sun was at the bottom of its nighttime loop, beginning to climb: just after midnight. It would be in Vana's eyes, narrowing his irises and dimming his vision if he looked back. Good!
It was a clear beautiful night, not too cold, with the temperature hovering at a positively tropical twenty above. She slid across the smooth white blanket covering the ground, trying not to think, concentrating on enjoying the skiing.
But she had to think. Vana had been trying to raise his Russian contacts. He'd given up. Now the only place he could be heading was toward some Russian security post or military installation here on the Kola Peninsula. He'd turn the problem of the American spies over to them.
A sob escaped her throat. She was going to have to kill that magnificent sinewy body that had given her so much pleasure. It wasn't fair! Vana was a wild, primitive creature, despite the education he'd received at the Lapp school run by the Norwegian government. What did politics have to do with the primeval bond they shared?
She took inventory. She had the Lapp knife. The staff. The little gold-plated automatic. And her terrible, deadly hands.
Vana had his staff and knife. He'd killed wolves with them, and a thousand-pound bear. But he'd be no match for a gun.
She caught up with him by a grove of evergreens.
He'd stopped to fix his boots, smoothing the lumps out of the senna grass they were stuffed with. His back was toward her. She glided silently up behind him, stopping twenty feet away.
"Hello, Vana," she said softly.
He turned around.
It was Aslak. His height and build had fooled her. And the embroidered colors of the sita. And the wolfskin.
His face registered shock and surprise. She'd never have been able to sneak up on Vana that way.
"You're wearing something that doesn't belong to you," Penelope said.
His features contorted with hate. "Vana has another wolfskin!"
"He earned it. You didn't."
He spat. "Vana! Always Vana! He is a fool! He knows nothing of the world!"
"But you do, don't you? How long have you been working for the Russians?"
"Since I was a boy at the Kautokeino school. They tried to interest Vana, too. But the fool lives in his own world."
"And you live in the Russians' world!"
He sneered. "They pay me well. In another year I'll have enough to live in a house in Stockholm or Oslo and buy a business. No more dirty Lapp! No more stinking reindeer!"
"I don't think you have a year, Aslak," she said.
She kicked off her skis and stepped forward, the shiny little gun in her hand.
It was going to be hard. Putting a bullet between those blue eyes that reminded her of Vana.
There was a blur of motion in the air between them, and something hit her wrist. The gun fell spinning to the snow. Her wrist was numb. It felt broken.
Aslak had snaked out with the staff. It gave him a ten-foot reach. She'd underestimated him. He was a Lapp. And he was Vana's brother.
She'd leaped back, out of reach, at the moment of contact. He moved forward, stalking her. She backed up.
His staff whizzed through the air at her. She caught it with the ski pole in her left hand.
Quarter staves! It was one of the esoteric forms of hand-to-hand combat she'd learned during the long year at the secret schools. Aslak couldn't possibly know all the moves. Ordinarily she'd finish him off quickly.
But she couldn't use her right hand.
His stick came at her again, aimed at the side of her head. She ducked and it sailed over her. Her own pole poked at his solar plexus. It was damnably awkward, manipulating an eight-foot pole at one end. with one hand. But it drove the breath out of him. He looked surprised. Then cautious.
She could kill him with her left hand if she could get close enough. But that long staff of his was going to keep her at a distance. The fight would be on Aslak's terms.
He whipped the staff in an arc, a foot from the ground, trying to knock her legs from under her. She leaped nimbly over it.
She lashed out at him again, a foot of the handle braced against her forearm to compensate for the other hand. It robbed her of twelve inches of reach, but it was the only way she could manage. Aslak twisted like a snake, avoiding the blow.
"Curse you for a devil!" he panted.
He swung, a powerful blow that would have smashed her collar bone if it had connected. She writhed out of the way, but the staff slid down the length of her arm, grazing her knuckles.
She dropped her pole. She stooped to pick it up, but his wicked staff came whirling at her again. She jumped back, just in time.
She faced him, her hands empty.
He came toward her, grinning, his knife in his left hand, the staff in his right.
"Vana kills wolves that way," she said. "I guess you're just about good enough to kill a woman."
He uttered a bellow of rage. The long staff swung toward her head. It was an unskillful blow, spoiled by his anger. But it carried enough force to crack her skull.
She let it hit her. It was her only hope.
She rode with the blow, whipping her head to the side, her body already in lateral motion before the staff connected with her skull. She looked as if she'd been knocked sideways. Almost, her move hadn't been enough. She lay on the ground, dazed, her vision blurred.
She tried to lift her arm. She couldn't. She couldn't raise her head, either. Nothing worked.
It was frightening. She couldn't think too clearly, but she knew… something… what was it? Oh, yes, if he plunged the knife into her before she was able to move again, then she was… she couldn't remember the word.
Aslak was standing over her. He rippled. The whole world behind him rippled.
He put a mittened hand casually on her chest, between her breasts, pressing her down. He held the knife up. Its blade glittered in the midnight sun.
"As… Aslak…" she said.
The knife paused. He'd stopped rippling. She could feel the beginnings of strength flowing back into her body. But was it enough?
The knife lifted again. There was a pitiless light in his blue eyes. The knife flashed down, toward her throat.
And her hand streaked up to meet it.
She caught his wrist in her left hand and deflected its motion. She made no attempt to halt it. It wouldn't have been possible to hold his wrist for more than a few seconds in her present condition. Instead she took advantage of Aslak's own momentum, turning its aside: just barely enough.
The knife blade plunged into the snow, a bare inch from her cheek. Immediately he snatched his hand away and raised the knife again.
But her hand was already streaking from the side toward his neck, the edge held straight and flat in the killing position that was burned into her subconscious.
Her right hand!
It wasn't broken after all. It had just been numbed by the blow. She hadn't noticed that feeling had been returning to it while her dazed senses recovered.
It sliced into the side of Aslak's neck, palm up, the terrible edge as rigid as a board. The force of the blow crushed the jugular vein and ruptured the carotid artery running alongside of it before knocking loose the neck vertebra that finally brought it to a halt.
Aslak's blue eyes flew open in astonishment. The knife dropped from his hand. He swayed on his knees, blood welling from his mouth. He tried to speak but couldn't.
He died on his knees. Only after the light went from his eyes did the effort of will that he was exerting disappear, letting the tendons and muscles grow flaccid. He folded backward, like a shut book.
Penelope picked herself up off the ground. She was dizzy for a moment, then felt all right. She hobbled over to her skis and put them on.
She'd gone no more than a hundred yards when she saw him. The embroidered tunic was bright and gaudy against the illuminated snow. He moved easily toward her, gliding like a creature out of northern myth.
"Vana!" she said.
He stopped, gazing at her out of remote blue eyes.
"Where is Aslak?"
She motioned backward along her path. He made no move to go there.
She said, "Why are you here?"
"To catch my brother. I followed his trail, then saw that someone else was following him." He looked at her stolen skis. "I did not know it was you."
"To catch Aslak? What do you mean?"
He gave her a somber look. "Aslak wanted me dead. The other man told me. He picked up my clothes the night I followed the devil wolf. But he did not try to find me."
"The blizzard…"
"He turned back before the blizzard struck."
Penelope studied Vana's face. "Would you have killed him?"
"Perhaps."
They stood facing one another on their skis for a moment. Then Vana spoke again.
"The she-wolf has made a kill," he said.
He meant her.
She didn't say anything. It wasn't necessary.
His face twisted in pain, and a more complicated emotion. "I must kill you, then."
"Aslak would have killed me, Vana."
"I know."
"He would have killed you"
"He was my brother."
She waited. After a moment he said. "Go, Penelope, go from my sita. If I see you, I must kill
you."
"Or I you."
He acknowledged the truth of that with a nod. "One of us. One will kill the other. And part of himself."
It was the sweetest bouquet anyone had ever handed her. Penelope was touched.
"I won't come back, Vana. Tell my friends where I am. Tell them to meet me here."
He nodded again. He turned to go.
"Aslak has your wolfskin," she said.
The blue eyes were cold as ice. "Let him keep it," he said. "At long last."
He pushed off on his skis. He stopped, just within hailing distance, and called back over his shoulder:
"Maria derivan!"
Go in peace, he'd said.
She watched his dwindling figure until it disappeared into the frozen landscape. Then she went back to bury Aslak. She wrapped him in the stolen wolfskin before tumbling him into the shallow trench she'd scraped out with her knife. Then she sat back under a pine tree to wait for Wharton and the others.
* * *
Fiona plugged in her hair dryer. She turned to Paul. "All right, go ahead."
Paul fine-tuned the transceiver in the makeup case. A musical chord sounded: a D-major telling him that he'd made contact with MESTAR, a couple of hundred miles out in space. A moment later, a C-natural was added to the harmony, making it a seventh chord. That told him MESTAR had completed the link to Key in Washington.
"Come in, Key," he said into an open jar of face cream. The face cream was real. The heavy opaque jar itself contained a microphone and scrambler, fantastically microminiaturized through metal oxide-semiconductor circuitry.
A box of mascara cleared its throat and spoke in Key's voice. "How are things in Helsinki?" it said.
"Helsinki is war," Paul said. "What've you got for us?"
"Two things. Maybe they're both the same."
"Shoot."
"First — the phony CIA man Coin killed at the Doomsday briefing. He wasn't Russian."
"One of our other alphabet agencies?"
There was a pause. "He was Chinese."
"Chinese? I thought he was a blond, blue-eyed honkie!"
"He was altered surgically."
"But the pigment…"